Wonder (Water) Wall

A short hour and 3/4 flight from Rio to Iguacu town. I got annoyed at the old people who had window seats and just slept the whole way. At Iguacu airport we booked a rain forest tour for tomorrow. There were amazing views of the falls as we pulled up to our hotel. (Still can't work out the time difference.) The Cataratas Tropical Hotel is lovely, very colonial. We had lunch by the poolside and had a visit from a two foot long lizard. This was not your average gecko!

We went for what we intended to be a quick look at the falls and ended up spending four hours on the trails around the national park.We were scared in the rain forest as we were surrounded by something making a really loud rattling noise. We couldn't see what was making the noise, but later found out that it was a small insect called a cicada. Oh, we felt silly for being scared...and then we walked right into a huge spider in its web! Photos on the link.

We saw our first mirador today. These are raccoon like mammals. Very cute. We were surprised at how tame this one was as it walked right by us and had a sniff at a toddler in a pram. We saw more of the large lizards. The waterfalls are huge. They're in four sections, most with two steps. There is a platform out on one of the steps between two stages of the falls. Argentina is across the river. We'll experience the falls from the Argentine side on our tour tomorrow.

Once we got back to the hotel we had a swim. Colonial hotel on oneside. Tropical rain forest on the other.Later we watched the sunset over the waterfalls, which is weird as maps show the falls to be East of the hotel! The sunset would have been very romantic had it not been for getting bitten to buggery by mosquitoes (see Ian's head photo).